Justinian Read online

  When he dismounted, one of my grooms took charge of the horse. Chainmail rattled on his shoulders as he walked toward my high seat. He also wore an iron helmet, which, like the mailshirt, looked to have been taken from a Roman soldier. He had a sword on his belt- and almost died under the spears of the excubitores when he drew it. But, instead of attacking me, he stabbed the sword deep into the ground. He took off the helmet and hung it on the sword hilt. Then he undid the mailshirt; his armor clattered about him, to use the Homeric phrase, as he let it fall to the ground.

  "Emperor, you are too strong for me," he said in Greek that, like his horse, was better than I had looked to find among the Sklavenoi. "I surrender myself to you."

  Standing there before me in plain linen tunic and baggy wool trousers, he cut a surprisingly impressive figure. He was not tall- I overtopped him by half a head- but very wide through the shoulders and narrow in the waist, with arms as thick as a thin man's legs: a warrior to reckon with. For a Sklavinian, he was handsome. True, his face was broad, but his features, though blunt, were regular. His eyes were wide and candid and a very bright blue; on a woman, they would have been devastating. He trimmed his buttery hair and beard more closely than most of his countrymen. Looking at him, one might have imagined he was a quarter of the way along the line toward becoming a Roman. He was older than I, but not old: thirty, thirty-five at the most.

  "You would have done better- for yourself and for your people- if you had surrendered before," I said.

  Those massive shoulders rolled in a shrug. "I thought I could beat you. Till now, I never met any man I could not beat. But you have too many horsemen in iron shirts, and that fire you throw"- it was not a grimace of fear, but one of anger, frustration-"I cannot match it, and my men will not stand against it. And so- you have me."

  "And what shall I do with you?" I mused. I had promised not to kill him, and I keep my promises, as both my friends and my enemies have reason to know. I had not promised, however, not to lock him in a tiny chamber somewhere, feeding him bread and water till he eventually had the good grace to expire.

  I had not been talking to him, either, but to myself. Nevertheless, he answered me: "Emperor, you send my people off beyond the edge of the world, is it not so? Send me with them. Let me lead army of them for you. You are too strong for me, but I know I can beat every other man who was ever born of woman."

  If he could be trusted, it was not the worst idea in the world. The Sklavenoi I was resettling in Anatolia could fight; many of them had been captured in battle at the point of a spear. I intended making military peasants of them, paying them some small wage each year, with which they could maintain their equipment and mounts, and summoning them at need to war. My plan had been to put them under the command of Roman officers, but they might fight better for one of their own. "Neboulos," I said, "if you think you will be a kinglet in Anatolia, as you have been here, think again. The Roman Empire has only one Emperor, and I am he."

  Those wide blue eyes went even wider. "You are Emperor. I am your man. I will help you against your enemies." Then he smiled- a provocative smile, almost the smile a man would use to try to bring a woman to his bed. "And, Emperor, you owe me four pounds of gold."

  "I what?" I said, partly in amazement, partly because his Greek, while good, was not perfect, and I wondered if I misunderstood him.

  But he repeated it: "You owe me four pounds of gold," he said, very clearly. Seeing me still gaping, he condescended to explain: "You say you will give one pound of gold to man who brings me to you. No one does it. You say you will give two pounds. No one does it. You say you will give four pounds. I bring me to you. Here I am." He thumped his chest. "You owe me four pounds of gold."

  I could have killed him on the spot for such effrontery. But I had sworn an oath to let him live- and, in any case, I was laughing too hard to think of the headsman's sword. And so, with a smile, he began to betray me.

  MYAKES

  Ah, Neboulos. I haven't thought about Neboulos in going on forty years not more than once or twice, anyhow. He was a piece of work, Neboulos was, no two ways about it.

  You've never heard of him, Brother Elpidios? Not till you read of him in Justinian's manuscript, you say? God and all the saints, you've made me feel ancient often enough before. Why should one more time bother me? And, thinking about it, his heyday was here and gone years before you were born, so there's no real reason you should have heard of him, but stilla160…

  I wondered if Justinian would kill him when he came out with that, "You owe me four pounds of gold." Every excubitor who heard him was either snickering or rupturing himself trying not to snicker. Justinian's temper was always chancy, though. If he'd taken it the wrong way, Neboulos was one dead Sklavinian, oath or no oath. But then Justinian laughed, and when the Emperor laughs, everybody laughs.

  Neboulos? Yes, he laughed, too.

  JUSTINIAN

  After Neboulos came into our camp, warfare against the Sklavenoi ended. We rounded up some thousands more of the barbarians and sent them on toward Constantinople for resettlement. In this, Neboulos made himself useful, persuading several petty chiefs they would do better to yield than to waste their lives in useless battle.

  With the Sklavinias under Roman sway, I brought the army down to Thessalonike, which, although the greatest European city in the Empire after Constantinople, had been twice besieged by the Sklavenoi over the years, and might have fallen to them if not for the miracles wrought by St. Demetrios, its patron.

  I rode into Thessalonike on a white horse, at the head of the soldiers. The people of the town went wild to see me. For so long, Thessalonike had been a Roman island in a Sklavinian sea; now it was linked again to the larger part of the civilized world. Seeing Neboulos walking behind my horse, the inhabitants jeered and cursed him, for they had feared his growing power.

  He took no notice of the jeers. Even when they began to pelt him, first with rotten vegetables and then with stones, he dodged only those missiles aimed directly at him, and did so with a quick economy of motion that kept all but a couple from striking him.

  "Let him be!" I shouted to the crowd. "He is mine!" The Thessalonikans bayed wolfish approval at that, no doubt construing it to mean I had in mind for him a fate more bitter and lingering than any a mere mob could inflict. Would they had been right. In fact, though, it was only that I admired the courage and self-possession with which he faced them, and did not wish to watch him slaughtered as part of the celebration of my arrival.

  Seeing Thessalonike and its walls, I understood how (with the help of St. Demetrios) it, like Constantinople, held out in the face of everything its foes could do. It rises steeply from the Thermaic Gulf, the Via Egnatia entering it less than half a mile from the sea. The citadel stands on the high ground in the northe astern part of the city. The circuit of the walls (counting the seawall, which is in a poorer state of repair than the rest) is about three miles. More than a hundred towers, some rectangular, others triangular, gave Roman soldiers fine vantage points from which to fight.

  Kyriakos, the bishop of Thessalonike and also, in effect, its governor, greeted me just inside the Kassandreia Gate. "God bless the Emperor Justinian!" he cried, "the God-crowned maker of peace, benefactor to this city, pious and faithful to Jesus Christ our Lord!"

  "God bless Thessalonike," I replied, to which the people cheered. "Through His help and that of the great martyr, Saint Demetrios, we have triumphed against our foes, who are also the foes of the saint." The Thessalonikans shouted louder for their beloved saint than they had for their city.

  Kyriakos leading the way, we paraded through Thessalonike. When we passed under a great triumphal arch perhaps a bowshot inside the wall, he crossed himself, saying, "This was built by the arch-persecutors, Galerius and Diocletian."

  Reliefs on the arch showed prisoners- easterners: Persians, perhaps- pleading for mercy before a Roman Emperor in antique costume like that which Constantine the Great is often seen wearing on his monuments.
As the bishop had said, Galerius and Diocletian savagely persecuted Christians, and no doubt suffer the pangs of hell because of it. But without their victories, the Roman Empire would have suffered untold grief at the hands of its enemies. How was I to feel about them, then? How I felt, at the time, was puzzled.

  Just north of the triumphal arch was an impressive church dedicated to St. George: Thessalonike seemed to have, and to need, several churches favoring the military saints. It also had, along the Via Egnatia, a church dedicated to the Mother of God. "In here," Kyriakos said proudly, "rests an icon of our Lord which human hands did not paint." His pride was justified, for by possessing such a holy image Thessalonike showed itself to be no provincial backwater, but a city to be reckoned with.

  Shortly after passing the church dedicated to the Virgin, we turned north up a meaner, narrower street leading to the church of St. Demetrios, a church worthy of standing comparison to any I have ever seen, save only the great church in the imperial city. It is an old-fashioned basilica, rectangular in plan, with a wooden roof and with a transept giving it something of a cruciform appearance.

  "Here we shall celebrate the divine liturgy," Kyriakos said, "celebrating also your glorious victory against the godless Sklavenoi who have for so long oppressed and harassed Thessalonike."

  Notables, both priests and laymen, filled not only the wide nave of the church but also the aisles to either side, aisles separated from that nave by columns of red, green, and white marble, a stone with which Thessalonike is abundantly supplied. I admired the mosaics of St. Demetrios and others, who I learned were a prefect Leontios (the coincidence of names amused me), who had built the first church on the site more than two and a half centuries before, and Kyriakos's predecessor, John, who had led the defense of the city against the Sklavenoi during my great-great-grandfather's reign.

  At the close of the liturgy, I took communion from Kyriakos, eating of our Lord's flesh and drinking His blood. Afterwards, the bishop introduced me to a whole great swarm of prominent Thessalonikans, men whose names vanished from my head the moment I left the city they inhabited. And why not? Men who think themselves worth remembering come to Constantinople, to see if they can prove it.

  A partial exception was Dorotheos, commander of the garrison of Thessalonike. Even he, though, was less than he might have been, allowing Kyriakos to take the leading role in administering Thessalonike; in that, though, he but acquiesced to a long-standing tradition of episcopal control in city affairs.

  To me, Dorotheos said, "You have done a great thing, Emperor, in subduing the Sklavenoi hereabouts. They've made life miserable for us the past hundred years."

  "Your hinterland is free of them now, for I've cleared them out by the tens of thousands," I answered, and then paused, struck by a happy thought. I had been contemplating making Thrace a military district on the order of those in Anatolia; doing the same around Thessalonike would give the city warriors on whom to draw should the barbarian menace revive. I said, "I will send military peasants here, to settle on some of the lands cleared of the Sklavenoi. And you, Dorotheos, you I shall name the first commander of the military district of Hellas." At the last moment, I chose that more sweeping title instead of naming the district after Thessalonike.

  "Thank you, Emperor!" Dorotheos exclaimed. We both knew, of course, that great stretches of Hellas remained outside effective Roman control- indeed, outside any Roman control at all- being overrun by more bands of Sklavenoi. All the same, the name offered the promise of eventual redemption for the territory named.

  Then Kyriakos said, "What a splendid promotion for you, Dorotheos," in tones suggesting he did not find it splendid at all. I realized the bishop was used to being the leading man in Thessalonike, and found anything tending to aggrandize a rival distasteful in the extreme. I also realized I would be wise to do something to placate Kyriakos, as he would probably remain more important here than Dorotheos even after the military district of Hellas was established.

  At a supper later that evening, I found a way to grant Kyriakos a favor without diminishing the new authority I was conferring upon Dorotheos. The centerpiece at the feast was a roast kid basted with olive oil and crushed garlic. Watching Neboulos amused me; while relishing the fatty richness of the dish, he cut away the crisp outermost slices of meat and shoveled on salt with both hands to kill the taste of the garlic, the Sklavenoi, like many barbarians, being less fond of it than we Romans.

  When he noticed my eye on him, he said, "Emperor, I am glad again I surrender to you. You Romans live by sea, make all salt you want. You do not sell salt to me. You do not sell it to my people. Now at last I can eat all I want." And he reached for the saltcellar again.

  "Selling salt is against our law," I said, and let it go at that. Without salt, preserving food is much harder. That makes the stuff a weapon of war, hardly less than iron. Anyone selling his foes that which strengthens them deserves what happens to him.

  Neboulos sprinkled still more salt over the fresh surfaces of kid his knife exposed. Turning to Kyriakos, I adapted the text of the Book of Matthew, saying, "In the Sklavinian you see a man for whom the salt has not lost his savor."

  "True enough, Emperor," he said, and then, lowering his voice, "I would not mind if, like Lot's wife, he were turned into a pillar of salt. Not only would we be rid of him as a man- which, thanks to you, we are in a different way- but we could break him up and sell him for a good price."

  I laughed, but quickly grew thoughtful. "You want to sell salt for a good price? I'll tell you what I'll do: I'll give the church of Saint Demetrios a salt pan all to itself, and all the revenues from it, to thank the saint for aiding us against the Sklavenoi. Let the salt pan be entirely free: you'll pay no taxes for it, and you will not be obliged to furnish salt from it to the soldiers without payment. Does that suit you, Kyriakos?"

  "God bless you, Emperor!" the bishop exclaimed, which I took for an affirmative.

  "My secretaries will draw up the edict tomorrow," I said, and Kyriakos looked more joyful still. Thessalonike lying by the sea, granting the church he headed the privilege of producing its own salt would bring it extra revenue without seriously inconveniencing the garrison, which had other salt pans upon which to draw. It also helped salve the bishop's bitterness at the greater authority Dorotheos was to acquire.

  ***

  If I could not live in Constantinople, I would sooner make my home in Thessalonike than in any other city I have seen. But I could not stay there long. It was already September, the beginning of a new year, and I wanted to strike a blow at the Bulgars before returning to the imperial city for the winter.

  To reach the Bulgars, the Roman army had to pass through the territory of the seven tribes of Sklavenoi they had subjected to themselves when they settled south of the Danube after my father failed to crush them north of the river. The roads leading up to that country were frightfully bad. Even when it was under Roman rule, it had been a raw frontier district, and it had been ravaged by Goths and Huns and Avars and Sklavenoi and Bulgars; whatever highways had existed were now dirt tracks at best, memories at worst.

  The Sklavenoi of the Seven Tribes tried to withstand us from villages surrounded by a circle of wagons, as Neboulos had; the dreadful roads must have prevented word of what we could do to such works from reaching so far north. Liquid fire proved as effective against them as it had against him.

  He stood at my side as the flames leaped forth and seized the wagons. "How do you Romans do that?" he asked me, watching the Sklavenoi try and fail to douse the flames, watching our soldiers take advantage of the chaos the fire caused and cut down the barbarians.

  "It is a gift from God," I answered. Neboulos was free enough within the camp, but not so free as to be able to sniff around the wagons where the liquid fire and the tubes and bellows used to project it were stored. I had warned his guards their heads would answer for that. They believed me, which was as well, for I meant every word of it.

  "Your god is a strong
god," Neboulos said. He knew little of the true and holy Christian faith, worshiping instead the lying demons who, calling themselves gods, have deceived and damned the Sklavinian race.

  These Sklavenoi did not resist so stoutly as had the barbarians Neboulos had led. On our breaking into their village, they threw down their bows and javelins and cried for mercy in their own tongue and in such fragments of Greek and even of Latin (this having been, before the barbarians' invasions, a Latin-speaking land, they must have learned it from a few surviving peasants) as they had. We took prisoners by the thousands, and sent them down toward the Via Egnatia for resettlement.

  Among the prisoners were many comely women. As far as I was concerned, the soldiers who wanted them were welcome to them.

  Having defeated the Sklavenoi of the Seven Tribes, we pushed north and east over the Haimos Mountains, invading the land the Bulgars held directly. They fled before us, driving their herds of cattle and sheep with them. Unlike the Sklavenoi, who lived in villages and farmed, the Bulgars were nomads without fixed abode, and the more difficult to bring to battle against their will on account of that.

  We might yet have punished them as they deserved, they being unprepared to resist so many Romans roaming through the land they had stolen, had not the weather turned against us. It might as well be a different world north of the mountains; the olive does not grow there, nor does the grapevine: the winters in that benighted province are too fierce to let either survive. And the first snowstorms came early that year, covering the land in white.

  The chief quartermaster, an officer named Makarios, approached me with a worried look on his face. "Emperor, we have campaigned all through the summer," he said. "We have not the supplies, especially for the horses, to go on in the face of snow."